Brutalism gets a bad name. Ok, let’s be honest, it has a bad name. If tomorrow morning you were tasked with encouraging parents to send their kids to a specific playground, you probably wouldn’t call it brutalist. Or would you? For a brief, wonderful moment in the middle of the 20th century, archite
The best poetry alludes to a kind of magic. After all, as one classic tweet had us recall, the act of reading is to “stare at marked slices of tree for hours on end, hallucinating vividly.” It seems a bizarre activity when worded as such, but it’s the truth, as the power of finely tuned stanzas is e
“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.” – Philip K. Dick Humanity’s centuries-old attempt to understand our own consciousness, from philosophy to biology, can basically be summed up by one single image: a dog trying to chase its own tail. From Descartes’s declaration
Sign up to receive each week’s Playlist e-mail here! Also check out our full, interactive Playlist section. D4: Dark Dreams Don’t Die (PC, XBOX ONE) BY ACCESS GAMES Any argument in favor of the existence of cult videogame directors should probably start and end with SWERY. This excitable man from
What will you do when the robots take your job? It’s only a matter of time until we’re all melted down and shoveled into vats as our flesh becomes a more valuable resource than our labor. So it’s about time you start planning ahead for your (f)unemployment. Your options are severely limited to 1) le
Sometimes the internet guffs out material so zany that I remember why I like it. This month it’s a new website titled WINDOWS93 that’s providing this service. It transports you back to the 1990s through a wormhole made of broken memories. Starting up as if it were Windows 95—albeit with the nostalgi
Knyttan is a fashion startup or, if you would prefer a cultural reference, a 21st century incarnation of Cher’s closet in the opening scenes of the 1995 teen classic Clueless. In practice, the film’s build-your-own-wardrobe app looks an awful lot like the maker movement’s version of fashion design.
Kyttenjanae depicts loneliness and sickness in an unusual way. It’s almost always as a rainbow-flavored mix of gross-out and grace. The signature animated art that she shares on her Tumblr page is recognizable for the eyeless humanoids that ebb and flow as if made of pink and polychromatic liquids.
At the time of his death in 1527, the political philosopher Niccolò Machiavelli had never stated his position on works being placed in the public domain. Fair enough: “public domain,” as presently constituted, was not an idea in Machiavelli’s time. One can, however, suspect that the author of The Se
Send a person to the Moon and they’ll come back with stories about the Earth. Why is that? All the scientific guff aside, the Moon isn’t all that interesting; it’s a rock with hardly anything on it besides large, dark, basaltic plains. But what the Moon does offer is a brilliant view of the Earth an
“I don’t see it,” were the first words out of my mouth, when my mom took me to see the Mona Lisa at the Louvre when I was eight. After days of hype, I felt betrayed by both the tour guide and my own mother. I was promised history, and all I got was a bunch of butts in my face while I tried to jockey
